Current Employer requesting background check

MikeMouse

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Does the whole company only deal with just that one website? Are they hoping to have other clients outsource to them in the future? Is the existing contract coming up to tender again?

Sounds like the sort of thing a company does to convince others that they are a fit and proper organisation that others can trust.

I agree - pretty sure thats the reason

Doshwaster

marleyboy wrote: »

Its pretty standard nowadays, just one aspect is to check immigration status.

Yes, I had to provide a scan of my passport due to "Home Office regulations" a few months ago even though I had been with the company for over 10 years.

Typical HR "one size fits all" policy. Easier for them to ask/tell everyone to do it than to be accused of discrimination by picking on people who look a bit "foreign" or risk missing anyone out.

Savvy_Sue

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

They may just want to ensure that you are entitled to work in the UK.

Which they should have done before the OP's first day at work.

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

Common sense does not apply: apparently it is discriminatory to just require this of people who seem ... not as British as Yorkshire Pudding!

It IS discriminatory to require it of some but not of others!

Doshwaster wrote: »

Typical HR "one size fits all" policy. Easier for them to ask/tell everyone to do it than to be accused of discrimination by picking on people who look a bit "foreign" or risk missing anyone out.

If it has to be done, then it has to be done for / by everyone.

I'm not sure how details of the OP's electricity supplier will help with proving entitlement to work in the UK, however. And if it's also meant to be verifying ID, I'm not sure how effectively it can be done as a purely online process.

See, when I check someone's right to work, I look at their passport, and I look at them, and establish that there's a possibility of it being the same person. Then I check it's either a UK passport, or that if it's not then it doesn't have any work restrictions in it. Then I take a copy (because I have to keep evidence that I've checked it), sign and date it and hand it back.

I don't accept scans sent by email.

OP, I'd ask your employer why they are doing this now, if they have only just caught up with the 'right to work' legislation then I'd say that if you don't wish to provide them with proof of your RTW then they don't have to employ you any more, and they may have decided that this is the way they wish to establish RTW, so ...